


Convergence

by Aproclivity



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: AU from mid 304, Alex Reagan is both good and terrible at journalism, Canon Typical Violence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kidnapping, Past Child Abuse, Strand's gotta Strand, Thomas Warren is always the worst, howard strand is not the worst person in the story and i hate it, it literally takes the end of the world for these morons to talk always, it's nic's turn on the self preservation instinct, mentions of miscarriages, richard strand is a dramatic bitch, sometimes kicking something in anger is the best plot device, warren is the worst in every story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23057785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: When investigating Howard Strand's attic, Alex and Strand find something that proves that Thomas Warren is far more than he seems, and that changes everything. AU from mid 304.
Relationships: Alex Reagan/Richard Strand, Richard Strand/Coralee Strand (past)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34





	1. "In an attic. In a trunk."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdyvixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyvixen/gifts).



> So I was talking to Katie and she said "well now I want [Spoiler] /nudge." And considering how my love language is writing things for my wife, here we are. This story so far has seven chapters and counting, and will be updated every few days or so as long as I keep writing it. This story takes place two days after Alex met with Thomas Warren about the Horn of Tiamat.

“You know,” Alex’s voice seems loud and echoing in the attic of Strand’s father’s house especially considering how she’s sitting on the floor with the boxes surrounding her. Photos are loose around her, and she’s processing them into files. It’s taken a while but Richard had finally found the key for the locked door so that’s where the two were spending the rainy Saturday afternoon: bathed in sickly yellows and grays and shadows as they went through even more of Howard Strand’s things. “There’s one thing that doesn’t make any sense in this.”

“ _One_ thing,” Strand snorts from ten feet away, surrounded by boxes of his own and Alex gives him a quick smile. 

“Yeah. One thing right now anyway. But from what we’d found in the new journal, your father has been working with Warren since you’ve been young. That doesn’t make any sense considering how he looks _now_.” Alex doesn’t say it and she doesn’t need to. The description of ‘sexy James Bond’ hangs in the air between them like some kind of specter and the wry smile on his face shifts into a petulant scowl as he closes a photo album with unnecessary vigor. 

Using the dismissive sarcasm tone that Strand takes so often and that Alex learned long ago is a mask for hurt, he just snipes at her. “Yes. Well, It's probably some sort of _family_ thing. His father probably groomed him in the same way mine attempted too.” 

“Still. He talked like he _knew_ him though. Like quite well. The man we met would have been like a teenager when Howard died. But the way that he spoke of him was like a friend and equal, not exactly what one would think of a typical teenage/adult relationship. And he did both of the times we talked to him.” But only when Richard was there. When it was Alex, he’d just threatened her of course. But then again, Alex knows she was flippant and an asshole. 

Richard didn’t say it, but when she’d played the recording of the meeting late the night before after dealing with the cops for the car break in (her second in two years. Her insurance rates are going to _skyrocket_.) he had looked both worried and extremely amused before it had gotten to the point where he’d threatened her more implicitly. First Strand had gotten worried and then belligerent with her. 

Alex knows the attic is an apology for that belligerence that neither one of them are going to mention. 

Richard just lifts his eyes and forces her to hold his gaze for a moment, thought evident in his eyes before he just says, “what did we say about conclusion jumping, Alex.”

“ _Maybe_.” If the compromise is there then it’s a slight one before she adds: “but it’s still weird.”

“And what are you suggesting instead, Alex?” Strand’s voice has all of the sharp tones of irritation in it and Alex inwardly rolls her eyes. “That in addition to demons, Oneida and everything else, suddenly Thomas Warren is immortal? That he’s a demon himself? Why can’t you just be sensible for once?!”

Alex’s eyes narrow dangerously for a moment as she rises to her feet. “I said it’s weird because it is weird. And no, I wasn’t thinking that. Not exactly. What I was thinking was that there’s every possibility that your father faked his own death! Especially seeing that it’s not outside the realm of logic here considering everything else.”

“So now my father faked his death too. Faked his death in an accident that Warren himself implied as murder. This isn’t a game, Alex! We’re not in some sort of spy movie!” Strand himself has risen to his feet with his outburst. 

“Glad to hear you’re using Nic’s crib sheet, Richard. He’d be so proud.” It’s a cheap shot and Alex knows it, but she can’t deny that it feels good to see Richard color with that. “And for both of you saying that,” Alex just adds, “we seem to be in one more often than not with the whole being followed and kidnapped thing. But you think whatever you want, Richard. Call me when you’re done with your fit.” Alex is already halfway down the attic steps at that, and she slams the door behind her. 

Without thinking about it, Richard just kicks the trunk below him with the side of his foot and a sharp but empathetic, “ _fuck_!”

The swear comes once more when he realizes that the side had fallen open, spilling forward photos that had been secreted in a false compartment. As he picks them up again, Richard just swears for a third time because in his hand is an image that’s familiar. It’s the house in Summerview without a doubt, a view that’s been reinforced by not only what Alex calls ‘the load of childhood trauma’ but also by his penitent re-watching of the Cheryl tape. But that’s not what he recognized first. No the first thing he noticed was how heavily pregnant his mother was in the photograph. She’s smiling and there’s none of the fear or gauntness that time, illness and being married to the asshole who sired him would bring to her face. Howard Strand is there with his arm around her, smiling as well. He can say with perfect clarity that he looked happier than Richard had ever seen his father in life. 

The urge of course was to tear his father from the photo as Richard has with so many other ones (the feeling of a ripped photo had become a favorite over the years and had only intensified during the last one after his final conversation with Coralee) but what he saw there stopped him. Standing in the background of the photo was a man who was familiar indeed. As he went through the other photos, Richard Strand’s head felt like it was in a vise. But sure enough in every photograph that had fallen out of the side of the trunk, Thomas Warren was present in them and he didn’t look like he’d aged a day.


	2. Five minutes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After finding the pictures of Thomas Warren where he looks the same in 1959 as he does now, Richard goes his most Dr. Strand in order to authenticate them. After returning home from meeting the last missing piece of it, he finds that someone has broken into his office and left a direct threat against Alex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So hey, two updates in two days. We're in chapter ten now in my doc and I know exactly where we're going even if I don't know how long it's gonna take me to get there. Also this is the shippy chapter.

It takes six days of Richard being particularly Dr. Strand of the Strand Institute before he finally has all of the proof that he needs in order to authenticate the photos. Strand’s not an idiot, not in things like this and he only goes to the colleagues that he knows well in order to do it. But he does spread each photo among them. Or rather each part of the photos among them. It’s harder than he would have liked to have found copies of his mother’s handwriting for comparison but the old recipe cards that he’d kept from high school on provided more accuracy in how she wrote than a legal document ever would. 

It’s late Saturday evening when he pulls into the driveway at his father’s house—he’d been meeting a contact in Oregon and the traffic had been murder getting back when the feeling of something being very wrong hits him. Sitting in his car for a long moment, gripping his keys and cellphone, Richard makes a decision before he casually gets out and heads to the trunk of his car. One might, if they were watching, him assume that he was just gathering luggage and Richard uses the shadows of it to remove his coat while he inwardly makes a note to give Ruby a raise while not telling her that she was right when she’d put the wooden baseball bat into his car before she’d returned home to Chicago after they’d finished restoring his father's house. 

She’d never let him hear the end of it and he’s already not hearing the end of things quite _a lot_ where his assistant is concerned. He doesn’t need to add to the pile of ‘I told you so’ she already trots out on a nearly daily basis. 

Hiding the bat the best that he can within the confines of his coat over his arm, Richard keeps his keys in his other hand as he goes up the porch and the security lights turn on. In general the lights give him the security of normality but tonight they offer more risks than that and shadows where a perpetrator could hide. But nothing jumps out at him as he unlocks the door and leaves it unlocked behind him in case he needs to leave quickly. There’s still not a sign of anything being wrong as Richard disarms and then rearms his state of the art security system. But the oppressive feeling of wrongness doesn’t leave him. It intensifies as he turns on the hall light and follows the runner down into his office. The feeling is coming from there, Richard is sure of it, and his hand just tightens around the handle of the bat even if it offers him no reassurance as he does it. 

Turning on the overhead lighting, nothing looks out of place at first. His office is orderly, but when he comes around to stand in front of his desk Richard can’t help but to see it. He’s _supposed_ to see it, there’s no denying that. The map of Onedia from the time of John Noyes and George Duris is still set on top of it, covered in measured writing, highlighted routes and various assorted arrowed page markers cramped with his scribbles. It had been as he left it when he was pouring his energy into doing something other than waiting for the results and waiting for the interview he’d just returned from. But what hadn’t been directly on top of it was a photo of Alex. 

Dropping the bat as he picks the photo up, Strand’s brain immediately starts to process the information contained in it in as clinical a way as he can while his heart is slamming itself into his ribs like a rampaging herd of elephants. Telephoto lens, taken from across the street, probably one level up. This is her apartment clearly, and it’s starting to get dark as she’s sitting on top of her kitchen counter, holding her phone to her ear and a cup of coffee in the other. She’s chatting, and there’s a smile on her face, like she’s caught in the middle of a joke and Richard has the uncomfortable sensation that he’s the one on the other side of the phone. But the thought doesn’t have time to register, because he sees it then. As much as Strand has always claimed not to see things, wanted to believe that he didn’t, there in the doorway is a shadow that is too tall and is falling in the wrong direction for the late afternoon sun. 

“ _Alex_.” Her name is breathed as the photo starts to slip from his grip. But before it can finish being unintentionally dropped, the force of Richard turning gives it a forward momentum. His time running and the length of his leg gives him speed as he crosses his house in seconds, slamming the door behind him while he pulls out his phone. Alex’s number is dialed as he unlocks the car and then starts it without even putting his seatbelt on. It rings. Then it rings five more times in the length it takes him to make the turn out onto first street. When it connects, he starts to speak and is cut short by the sound of her outgoing message. Immediately hanging up and calling back, Strand makes the first right towards her house on as close to two wheels as he can manage. This time however, the call goes directly to her voicemail. “Alex! Answer your damn phone.” 

The third time it rings once before going to voicemail and Strand is deeply aware of the fact that it means that she’s ignoring the call. A fourth and fifth call have the same result, and the dread washes over him all the more. Speeding in and out of traffic, and even going so far as to blare on the horn, Strand makes extraordinary time to Alex Reagan’s apartment. Parking in the fire line without giving a damn if he gets towed, Richard just punches in the code that she’d given him before and then takes the stairs three at a time up to her third floor apartment. He arrives winded, but he can’t say if it’s the speed or the panic that is causing the constriction in his chest that forces his lungs to heave. Politeness has no place here as he pounds on the door, and calls out for her. 

Opening it on the second pound with her phone in her hand and a toothbrush in her mouth, Alex Reagan has never looked more beautiful to him. More beautiful, more alive and more _furious_. Wedging his foot into the doorway, he just presses past her and into her apartment. He’s never been here before, but that doesn’t stop him from moving through her living room to the windows and very quickly pulling down her shades, letting the heat of her fury bathe over him, because at least it means that she’s still here, that she’s still here and still _alive_. He’d gladly take her rage over anything else right now, because it means she’s still Alex. 

“ _What the fuck, Richard?_ ” From the loudness of her tone, and the emphasis on it, Richard is aware that it’s not the first time that she’s asked that question. It’s probably not even the second time. But as if seeing that she’s got his attention now, Alex’s hand is on her hip, and her eyes are fury as she nearly growls: “you can’t just come barging into my life like this when you’ve been ignoring me for a week. You can’t just show up at my apartment at midnight on a Saturday and act like you’ve lost your damn mind!”

“Alex, just listen to me!”

“You better have a fucking good explaintion for this, Richard because if you were anyone else, I would have called the police.” The words cause warring sensations in him: one at least he knows that she would call the police and two: the police weren’t going to be of any help. “What is the matter--” 

Before Alex can shout anymore, Richard just presses his lips to hers quickly. For a moment, she kisses him back, but the sensation of relief lasts only three seconds before there’s the sound of cracking and heat in his face. In mourning the loss of her kiss when she’d pulled away, Richard hadn’t realized that she was about to slap him. He just rubs his jaw for a moment while he stares at the fury that has replaced the reporter he knows, and she just demands again, this time more concerned and fearful than angry and Alex is staring at her hand as if she can’t believe what she’d just done. “What the hell?” 

“I…” He starts as his eyes catalogue over her. She’s dressed for bed and obviously not in the way that one would be were they expecting company. From where he stands above her, Strand can count three holes in the old PNWS shirt that she’s wearing, and the flannel in her pajama pants is nearly thinning through at the knee. Without the heavy layer of makeup that Alex normally wears, the shadows below her eyes are like bruises and he knows without question that they’re darker than they had been a week ago, and guilt presses into him, forcing him to take a step back from her. “I’m sorry,” he says at last, unable to look her in the face. “I don’t know what came over me.” 

‘ _I know what came over you_ ’ says the voice in his head that sounds far too like his assistant for Richard’s liking. ‘ _You love her and you’re worried about her so you kissed her. Now get your head out of your ass and fucking say something_.’ 

Now if only Alex wasn’t even angrier than she’d been. “You don’t know what came over you?” She quotes his words back to him. “First you ignore me for a week. Then you call me five times in a row and can’t take ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ for an answer, and then you show up uninvited and unwelcome at my door, push your way in, pull down by blinds and…” The moment when she figures it out is something horrifying to watch, really. The anger deadens in her expression as fear fills it, and Richard is well aware of the fact that he can’t lie to her about this. “ _Oh._ ” The word is soft, and Alex just wraps her arms around herself for a moment before she withdraws and drops down onto her sofa. “ _Oh._ ” The word comes again, and it’s a tether that draws him to sit next to her on the couch. Wordlessly, he just takes the toothbrush and phone from her fisted hands and places them on the coffee table before the two of them.

“What exactly happened?” The question that’s asked is calmer than Strand would ever have given Alex credit for in the face of this, but there’s still a waiver in her voice that he knows all too intimately as fear. It’s instinct for him to want to lie to her, and to hide what had happened, but considering the haunted look in her eyes, he just _can’t_ do that to her. 

So, instead Richard just sighs softly and rubs his hand over his face. “I found something in my father’s attic. After you left. I wanted to get them authenticated before I brought you into this. I wanted to make sure that they weren’t something that Warren,” the man’s name is spit through grit teeth. “Planted. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last week. I went up to Portland to meet with—“ he can’t tell her that. Not yet. So it’s a small lie that he gives her for the moment. “An old contact of mine for the final piece of it today, and when I came home,” Strand can’t tell her how he felt, how his house felt. If he tells her then she’s going to go off on being psychic again and things are going to be difficult enough without Alex’s being obsessed with that thought. So, he doesn’t mention feelings, but he also doesn’t lie. “When I went into my office, nothing was disturbed, and I don’t think anything was taken. I’ve been carrying the evidence with me most places to be honest, because I didn’t want something like this to happen to it. But there was a photograph placed on top of my most recent work, and it hadn’t been there before I’d left this morning. But it was a photo of you, Alex, taken through the window with a telephoto lens.” 

“Oh my god.” Alex just whispers, “they’re watching me. Like Simon said? And they’re taking photos? _Oh my god._ ” 

“Alex you need to keep breathing. I need you to keep breathing. I know this is new news but in many ways it isn’t. We’ve both been followed. Warren threatened you when you met him, and he broke into your car.” Funny how he’d never disputed her saying that when he did virtually everything else that she’d assumed was connected, but Richard had known that Alex was right. “This is just one more step to Warren’s game. He wants you to quit. He wants both of us to quit. This was a message to stop.”

Slowly and carefully, telegraphing his movements towards her as a way of asking permission, Richard just takes Alex’s hands in his own, and breathes again when she closes her fingers around his in turn. “If you want to quit then you should, Alex.” The words threaten to stick in his throat and to his tongue when he says them, but he also knows that he _should_. That Richard has to give her a way out that he, himself doesn’t have. “It’s probably better for you if you do. Get back to a normal life, on PNWS proper. Somewhere away from all of this and Nic’s things too. You deserve normalcy and happiness, Alex. The longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be to go back to that. And I fear we’re reaching a point of being unable to go back even if you wanted to.”

While Alex doesn’t pull away from him, some of the anger replaces the fear in her voice, filling it and expanding the flatness of what she had been before to her more normal tone. “I passed the point of no return a long time ago, Richard. We both know that. Even if I wanted to leave this story— _which I don’t_ —going to some normal reporting job is impossible. I lost any credibility I had with how irresponsibly I behaved last year.”

Richard winces. Alex isn’t wrong, and he _knows_ that she’s not, but it still hurts to hear her admit it anyway. Shame for that is old, and has settled into his bones next to his grief for far too long. But hearing her say that his coming into her life and his letting her stay in his and that it destroyed the respected and award winning journalist that she was still is a blow much stronger than the slap she’d given him. He knows he should pull away but instinctively Alex’s grip on his hand tightens. 

“No. It’s not your fault. Don’t think it’s your fault, Richard. _I make my own choices._ I’m the one who forced you into this no matter what your reasons ended up being. Besides, I was even a little out of control when we started. Leading questions, sloppy journalism. If it wasn’t your story it would have been the next one I was passionate about. I was a bomb waiting to go off and that’s not your fault.” The words are soft but they’re very matter of fact and Alex doesn’t look away from his face when she says them and when she adds: “I make my own choices, Richard. No matter what. It’s who I am.”

“Alex,” he just says her name softly; but there is a plea in it and even Strand doesn’t know what it’s for. But this time when he pulls his hand away, it’s only one and he moves it to gently touch her face. “I just can’t lose you. Not to this.”

“You’re not losing me to this, Richard. I’m not going anywhere.” She sounds so certain that Strand wants to believe her. If he could believe in anything without doubt, it would be the promise that Alex Reagan is making to him now, but he can’t believe in anything without doubt, even when she goes on. “You kissed me because you were relieved I was fine, and I understand that. But I make my own choices, Richard. And if you accept, I’m going to choose to kiss you now.” 

The statement surprises him so much that it’s all he can do to nod before Alex leans in and presses her lips to his. Whatever promise there had been in the second of time that she’d kissed him back before she’d slapped him was fulfilled and more by the way that she kisses him. It’s got a softness in it, but it’s also direct even in it’s gentleness. But then Alex deepens it, the tenderness still present even as it’s tempered with ardency, and be draws her closer to him, so close that she’s practically in his lap. 

_She’s just doing this for the story._ The darker parts of his brain whisper insidiously. _She doesn’t actually want you._ The voice adds as Alex touches his cheek. _She’s Coralee all over again._ The voice reminds him as she kisses his cheeks, his forehead, his closed eyes. Alex still hasn’t let go of his hand. 

When she pulls back, fingers laced with his own, her other hand on his cheek she just whispers. “I make my own choices, Richard. And I chose you every time.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” the words are pained and vulnerable as they come from his mouth unbidden. That’s a new experience, coming from the place of softness rather the harsher and jagged parts of his anger. “You have no idea what this could mean, Alex.”

“Yes I do.” The stubborn ass that she is reminds him, with the particular form of Alex Reagan fierceness in her eyes and the challenging jut of her chin. “You and I are at the center of this. Whether you like it or not, I’m here with you, Richard. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Alex. There’s things that you need to see before you make this decision. Things you need to hear. I. _Damn it_. I left my briefcase in the car.” And then another thought dawns on him. “Shit I left my car in the fire lane.”

“Wow.” Alex says lightly, a bad joke in effort to drain some of the tension in the air. He knows it’s an old habit and an attempt at normalcy that he appreciates. “You’re so not allowed to talk about me double parking ever again.”

“Yes, well.” There’s a slight stammer of embarrassment in his voice. “I need to get my briefcase so you can see. And I need to move my car. Will you give me five minutes before you decide? Just see the evidence, know what it _means_ before you decide if we can go forward in this and who we are.” He then adds softly: “what we are. What we’ve always been in ways even when we couldn’t admit it.” It’s not a love declaration by any means, but it’s something that the two of them don’t state and for now that’s enough. 

Richard can’t place his heart in her hands before he knows if she’s going to shatter it. Even if her leaving would shatter it anyway. 

“Okay. Five minutes.” The words are nodded slowly as Alex removes her hands from his face. Her expression is more somber than he’s seen in a long time, and there’s a sadness in it that he’s never seen. Not really. Hurt is something he knows in each line of her face, the flair of pain in the doe dark of her eyes. But this is something else: bone deep and uncompromising even in its sadness. Her voice is soft and the emotion bleeds into it, as she looks him dead in the eyes with the directionless that has alternately excites and infuriated him in turn. “Richard if you don’t come back tonight don’t come back. My heart can’t keep doing this.”

“Alex.” He just breathes her name as she looks down and not at him. He can feel his heart tighten around her words and he knows that she means them, and he knows that hurt and abandoned feeling she’s experienced all too well. Slowly he moves and presses his index finger to her chin, raising her face up to look at him. It takes a minute but her eyes open and she looks at him. When she does, Richard just kisses her softly and gently, putting the the words and the promise into them that he’s about to make. His heart is there too, given to her in ways that he shouldn’t before she knows the truth. Breaking the kiss, he just whispers his promise against them. “If you still chose me, if you still chose this once you know everything, Alex, then I’ll never leave your side again.”

“Okay.” Alex says as she kisses him again, and wraps her arms around him. It’s a hug, Richard knows. And one she’s always wanted to give him but has schooled herself out of thinking about. It had taken a lot for her not to hug him at various times during their tenure before she had firmly considered him a touch-me-not and something inside of Richard mourns that now. (He mourned it then but it was for the best.) Alex Reagan hugs are some of the best that he’d ever known (outside of the ones from Charlie’s) and now he realizes what he’s missing. 

But then she lets him go and steps back out of his personal space. Instantly he misses her warmth—instantly he missed _her_ but he knows it’s right when she speaks. “You should go get the stuff before your car gets towed. So I can know. So I can decide.”

“Yes.” He agrees softly . “I’ll be back in five minutes, Alex. I promise.” Turning from her, Richard doesn’t run to the door but he does walk swiftly, and he shuts it behind him softly, because this isn’t a retreat. It’s a pause on the conversation, nothing more and that’s the take away he wishes her to take from it. Taking the steps again, two at a time Richard is running now that he’s not in her presence urgency driving him forward. The car keys are in his hand and he’s out the door quickly. Thankfully his car is still there and there is no sign of the tow truck. 

Strand is about to thank whatever remaining luck that he has that his car is still there. But then the smell of salt water hits his nose. It’s strong, like a windy day on a beach and it doesn’t make sense. There’s an undercurrent of danger within it, like the promise of a bad storm and all of the hairs on Richard’s neck have pushed themselves up to stand at attention. Glancing around quickly while he squares his shoulders against the smell and the sensation of being watched, he sees someone standing in the yellowing pool of streetlight from the closest lamp to his car. It’s a woman, and her blond hair is moving as if the wind inside his head is real even though he can’t feel it. 

He stops. He wants to run. His promise is there pressing his steps forward but there’s something more terrified below it. It’s a primal fear, something in the back of his lizard brain that is screaming for him to run back inside of the building. But even in his panic Richard Strand is a logical man and his logic refuses to give into that urge. Staring at the woman he just walks (running is prey, his brain screams at him. Running is _prey and we are not prey_.) to his car and the beep of his unlocking the doors is too loud against the backdrop of hurricane winds in the back of his head and the absence of the sounds of the city around him. Opening the door, Richard loses sight of the woman like she was never there. But the feeling of fear doesn’t leave him and there’s a sudden sharpness against the back of his head. The only thought that he can think before darkness overtakes him comes out in a frightened, whimpered word: “ _Alex_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PNWS Boom. Also comments and kudos are life.


	3. Need you five minutes ago.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Strand's abduction, Alex calls the police, commits a highly illegal act and admits to Nic about what happened before Strand was abducted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so being as we're all like. Stressed out of our minds, this is the first of two new chapters that I'm going to upload of this fic tonight. Yay something good coming from this. Right now I'm about to start the eleventh chapter so here's hoping my brain will keep chugging along.

It’s against her better judgement (though when has Alex Reagan ever had better judgement) that as soon as Richard leaves her apartment she goes to the window and pulls up the shade he’d drawn. She has to know, she _has to know_ if he’s going to leave before the five minutes are up. Granted in the space of things less than five minutes of heartbreak isn’t going to help but she still needs to know. Averting her eyes from the apartment building across the street (yes, she remembers about the photographer from there. No she doesn’t really care about it for the moment) Alex just looks down. 

Something is wrong. Something’s _really wrong_ and Alex knows it before anything happens. The city is still in ways that she’d never heard it, especially on a Saturday night and there’s no people on the street. There _should be_ but there isn’t. The only person other than Richard that she sees is a woman who’s familiar to her in a way that Alex can’t place but she knows is wrong. Before she can ever think about it, Alex has her phone in her hand and is back at the window just in time to see the woman knock Richard out. 

She screams his name and without thinking about it she hits the emergency button on her phone. While it’s connecting to 911, Alex has the photo app open and takes pictures of the van that pulls up and the two men who get out and load him into it. “WNT-468.” The license plate is spoken aloud and repeated over and over again until the dispatcher picks up and that’s the first thing Alex says to her. 

“Ma’am what is the nature of your emergency?” The woman’s voice is calm and would be reassuring if it was any other situation and Alex could feel something beyond the leaden dread in her throat. 

“My friend,” the word comes reflexively, “Dr. Richard Strand has been kidnapped by two men in a black van. The license plate is WNT-468. They appear to be two white men but it’s dark and I couldn’t get a good look at them. But I took photos. My address is 86 Union Street. They headed north up Union. I saw it all. I was watching from the window. A woman hit him but I didn’t see her getting into the van.”

“You’re watching from the window?”

“Yes. He was going to move his car.” There’s a pause and Alex knows that the evidence was still in it. Without thinking she just runs out her apartment door and lets it slam behind her. She can’t hear what the woman says next as she runs down the stairs. When she reaches the door outside, she becomes aware that the dispatcher is still talking to her and the wail of a siren breeches the distance. 

“Ma’am are you there? Are you alright?”

Alex is still running and she makes her way outside to the car. Richard’s briefcase is still on the passenger seat and she opens the passenger side and removes it before shutting the door. Heading back inside she answers. “Sorry I’m fine. I was going downstairs to meet the officers.” It’s not exactly a lie and it rolls off her tongue when she slips the briefcase into the place where packages are normally stored for pickup. “My name is Alex Reagan and I’m very sorry but you’re going to want to wake Detective Basira up. She’s familiar with me and this case. I want her here. Please.”

“I’ll do my best ma’am. The police should be there in thirty seconds.”

“Please tell me that you’re looking for the van.” Alex doesn’t like the emotions in her voice but she can’t help them, and the woman is trying to be reassuring on the other end. 

“They’re looking, Alex. They’re going to find him. The police should be pulling up now.”

“Thank you.” Alex says it and she means it as she hangs up and opens her messages. Sending a quick one to Nic she is counting on their friendship for him to get how important this is. 

_I need you at my apartment five minutes ago._

‘Five minutes ago’ is old hat for them, it’s an emergency code going back to bad dates in college and she’s not surprised to get the text back almost immediately but she is relieved when he says: 

_I’m on my way. Ten minutes._

The cop is approaching her warily and Alex knows that she looks a mess so she heads him off at the pass: “I’m Alex Reagan. I’m the one who called. Yes I’m sure my friend has been kidnapped. I’ve got the pictures here.”

Her phone has closed but she enters the password into it before she opens the picture app and swipes to the first one. The younger officer’s face turns pale as he sees them and he just nods to the other cop who begins to relay the information. 

More police come, more questions are asked as they start to roll out the yellow crime scene tape around the car in the fire lane. The people that have been absent before come out in droves and the crowd is loud and shiftless in the face of the blocked off street. Alex is on her fifth repeat of the story and the third request for detective basira when someone calls her name and Alex lets out a relieved sob. “Please let my friend in. He’s got the keys to my apartment.”

The detective who Alex doesn’t know looks at her shivering, barefoot form and nods quickly to the officer Alex first spoke to and Nic is allowed past the yellow line. Immediately she throws herself into his arms. While the hug isn’t unusual, especially when she’s so shaky what she says is. “Someone took Richard. I saw it. I took pictures.” And then against his ear she adds in a whisper. “Stay here and get his briefcase from the cubby where my packages go, Nic. I’ll explain after I get back from the station.”

Looking confused and torn and like he wants to give her a lecture, it’s half a lifetime of friendship that makes him give her a shaky nod. 

Time starts to lose its meaning for Alex other than that they’re not telling her anything and that it may be running out for Richard. They bring her up to her apartment and let her get dressed before they take her to the station. Basira meets her there when Alex’s on her fourth cup of coffee and she explains about the photo and how she’d ignored his calls and that’s why he was going down to move his car. It feels like forever later when Basira returns with the photo in an evidence bag. 

Seeing the photo of herself for the first time through the thin film of plastic, Alex starts to cry. The detective makes noises about things like protective custody for her and questions her about the nature of the conversation but Alex just shakes her head at that. There’s no news about Richard or the van. It’s like it’s suddenly disappeared. The detective says that it’s more likely that they changed vans some place but ignores anything she says about Warren no matter how much Alex insists. 

It’s midday when they finally release Alex to the daylight that she blinks into. Her head is killing her from the lack of real food and too much coffee and sugar to make it palatable. The police keep her phone which is a problem but Alex doesn’t have time to dwell on that. The photos are in the cloud and she knows that she can access them. That and Richard calling her to tell her he’s okay are the only two things that her phone matters for right now. 

Even if she knows he’s not going to call until she finds him. 

Reporters call her name as Nic walks her out to his waiting car and neither of them speak to the rest of their flock. There’s too many cameras for this just to be a local story and Alex doesn’t want to think about that. All she wants is to find him. Really, she thinks, she should call Charlie and Ruby and Cheryl and make sure that they’re okay. Richard would want her too. Once the two of them are in the car and driving away, Nic just says softly, because he knows her so well. “I called them. They’re fine, Alex. They’re all worried about Strand but they’re safe.”

While Alex lets out a sigh of relief, Nic continues on. “But what the hell, Alex? You had me take evidence from a crime scene. What’s going on? What happened?”

Alex tells Nic mostly the truth, leaving out the part about the kissing. Because that’s not something he needs to hear and it’s definitely not something that she wants a lecture about. “Do you have his briefcase with you?” The question is asked and Nic just sighs and nods. 

“I hid it in your gym bag. It’s in the back seat. You can’t stay at your apartment, Alex. Not with someone taking photos of you from across the street. And never mind the reporters. Plus I don’t think you should be alone right now. This is scary, Alex. Whoever took Strand could have grabbed you.”

“I know. I have to figure out what was the evidence that was so important that Richard thought that it might make me stop investigating all of this. It’s got to tie into this somehow. And it’s all going to come down to Warren. Whatever you think, he’s probably the only one with the money to bankroll all of this.”

“Alex,” her name is gentle on Nic’s tongue and he looks at her with concern. “It could have been Coralee.” 

Unwrapping the fast food burger he’d dropped in her lap, Alex just shakes her head. “It’s not Coralee, Nic. She would have shown up and asked her to go with him like before.”

“Would she have? Would Strand even have gone?”

Alex takes a massive bite of her burger while she thinks about it, chewing her thoughts along with the greasy meat that tastes like the best thing she’d ever eaten. Swallowing before she responds, Alex just shakes her head. “No. I don’t think he would. Not anymore. But whoever it was, they didn’t even try. This woman hit him and then the two guys pulled him into the van and pulled away. It wasn’t Coralee though.”

Nic just nods knowingly. “I know there’s things you’re not saying, Alex. I’ve known you for too long for that. As your friend and not your boss, what happened.”

“He kissed me,” Alex just sighs, “when he found me alive and safe. I slapped him at first. Then after he explained some of it I kissed him back. But he told me that I needed to know what was in the briefcase before I could decide if I wanted to be with him or not. He was insistent about it. He’s already had it verified by experts. That’s what he’s been doing when he was gone for this week. It wasn’t just him picking up his toys and being an ass like he was before. He wanted to be sure before he gave it to me.”

Worry and concern dance with the interest on Nic’s face and he’s silent for a moment before Alex can tell that he’s settling on: “It sounds big.”

“It is. I’ve never seen Strand like that before, Nic. Not even when I told him Coralee was alive. Not even when she showed up again. This may be the biggest piece we’ve got and Richard was sure that it was going to be something life changing.”

“Then we better get to my apartment and take a look. Because Strand is a lot of things, but he’s not an alarmist.”

“No.” Alex just sighs. “He’s not.”

“He’s going to be okay, Alex. If Warren or someone wanted him dead they would have just killed him. Not taken him.”

Alex is trying to hold onto hope, but it’s flickering within her grasp when she just softly says: “I hope so, Nic. I really do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


	4. Don't even fucking say her name.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After his abduction, Richard Strand wakes up to an unexpected sort of nurse maid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter deals with some past mentions of canon compliant child abuse that I just want to warn for because I know that can be a difficult subject even in the best of times.

The room is dim but not dark when Richard wakes, his cheek pressed against a pillow that’s too soft. His mouth feels dryer than it’s ever felt and his head is pounding but those aren’t the first thoughts in mind. No, what he has is a singular thought distilled to a single word: “Alex!”

“She’s not here I’m afraid.” The light turns up and a blurry figure with a voice that he’s not heard in nearly thirty years speaks and Richard jolts upright his hands scrambling against the sheets for his glasses. “I’ve got them.” The words are soft but gruff when he says “put out your hands. I’ve got water and painkillers too.”

Something visceral that Richard has thought was long dead balks at those words and he’s unable to keep the sharp sneer from his voice. “How do I know you don’t have the strap, _Dad_?”

Howard just sighs softly. “I deserve that, Richard. I do and more. But I’ve got your glasses, boy. At least take them if you don’t take anything else. You’re going to need every advantage you can get here.” 

Stubbornness and disbelief are always present in Richard Strand and have been since he was a boy. They’re building blocks to Richard’s personality (that his father helped shape with each blow of the strap, his hand, and his harsh words) and while stupidity also has its place within that tower, he’s not going to be stupid now as he holds out his hands for the glasses to be in them. He needs to see even if he doesn’t trust the supposedly dead man before him. Richard holds his breath without realizing it until he feels the familiar wire frames in his hands and he slides them onto his face without thanks as he just stares at his father. 

Despite all wishes and hopes to the contrary, Howard Strand is alive and standing before him. There’s a passing thought that it seems that both he and Alex were right, but he needs to shove the thought away before it becomes too much for him to bear. Instead, Richard just focuses on his father. The twenty years passed his alleged death date haven’t been kind to him, and Richard can see a haggardness in his father that reminds the younger Strand uncomfortably of Alex when she hasn’t slept. From the paleness of his father’s skin it’s been several years since he’s seen sunlight and he now understands Alex’s distaste for the beard he’d grown last year because he shares it in what he sees mirrored in his father. 

Holding out his hand for the sealed water bottle and the Advil, Richard just demands: “where am I and how long have I been here?”

“You’ve been out for the better part of a day, Richard. But don’t worry, there isn’t going to be any lasting damage from it.” 

“Oh, so you’ve become a medical doctor while you’ve been dead, have you, Father?” The scoff in Richard’s voice is evident and sharp before he opens the pills and takes them, along with half of the bottle of water. 

“No, but I know from personal experience.” Howard just sounds tired and defeated, but Richard’s too angry to hear it. Even when his father adds, “if Warren wanted you dead, you would be.” 

Of course it was Warren, Richard knows it. _Has_ known it since he was hit in the head. In some ways, Richard’s always known that it was coming. He just drinks the rest of the water before he speaks again, eyeing the man that’s taken the other chair in the room where they’re held. There’s several doors, including one obvious one to the bathroom, one to what appears to be a small sitting room, and one to a closet where he can already see the suits inside of it. The suits drive the point of all of this home: this isn’t meant to be anything like a friendly chat with Warren. Even if it wasn’t for his father’s arrival here, he would have known it. However, if Warren thinks that his father’s appearance is going to keep him in line, then Warren’s been paying even less attention to Richard than he himself thought.

“What does Warren want?” The question is scoffed. “And please don’t give me bullshit about genetics and opening a door and a bullshit ancient goddess.” 

For a moment, Howard looks proud, and then a look of loss moves over him, and he can’t look his son in the face anymore. “Warren wants what Warren has always wanted, Richard. Warren wants you to open the door. I thought that teaching you to be skeptical would keep you safe, but it’s obvious now that it didn’t.” 

“Yes, well, lessons delivered at the end of a belt don’t always stick!” The rage in Richard’s voice gives the words a palabale bite, and Howard visibly flinches at them. “Especially when you leave me a house full of mysteries and mantles and demon boards and every bullshit under the sun!” 

Howard’s voice is soft and fragile, sounding every bit of his ninety years. “I have made mistakes, Richard. And you’ve no idea how much I regret what I’ve done to you and your sister.”

“Cheryl is _better off without you_.” There’s the venom of accusation in Richard’s voice, but it’s not one for their father alone. It’s for himself too; the mantra of telling himself that his daughter and sister are better off without him is an old trick to warn the shadows away most nights. On his better nights, Richard believes them. On his worse nights when he misses his daughter’s hugs and his sister’s laugh, even he can’t bring himself to do it. But it’s a familiar ache that’s written into the kaleidoscope of the pieces of who he is now, and there’s nothing to be done about it. Richard’s reconciled with Charlie at long last, but it’s one that’s as fragile as both of their moods. They’re both too proud and stubborn and hurt to have it be an easy one considering the history between them. Even if it’s a shared history that’s not their fault.

“Is she?” The question is mild, and rage rises in Richard again, but this time it’s not something that Howard shys away from. It unnervingly reminds Richard of being a child when his father had given him a lecture on how he needed to always be there to protect his sister from whatever hurts life threw at them. That they were twins and how that was a special bond. Too bad it hadn’t been special enough to stop Cheryl from thinking that Richard had murdered his wife. But still Howard went on without thought and pressed against a hot spot in Richard’s skin. “When was the last time you spoke to her? Did you even tell her yourself that your wife is alive?”

“For someone who has allegedly been a prisoner for twenty years, _you are remarkably well informed_.” It’s a tone that the people who have listened to the show would have known well, and would have realized that Richard was at the end of his patience with the line of questioning. Honestly, it’s not changed all that much from how he’d last spoken to Howard when he’d told him to stay the hell out of his and Charlie’s life. His father’s reaction is not what Richard would have expected, and he feels a growing sense of rage at that as well. 

His father flinches at the use of his first name in a way that he never did when Richard was a teenager but there’s no victory in it for the younger man. There had been then, as his mother’s body lay cooling in the town’s funeral parlor and Howard had just returned home from a trip even when Richard had tried everything that he could to tell his father that his mother was asking for him. And most importantly, she was running out of time. His father hadn’t even responded and it was the first time in his life that Richard had raised his hand to show the same violence to Howard as he had shown to Richard so many times over his life. Cheryl had needed to step between them in the end so the punch didn’t even get thrown. Richard wants to throw it now as his father keeps speaking. “Warren keeps me remarkably informed. I’ve even heard you on Alex’s show.”

Angrily Richard rises to his feet and cuts his father off with grit teeth. “Do not _fucking_ even say her _name_ , Howard. You don’t deserve to ever say her name. If something happens to her because of this godforsaken path that you’d placed me on I swear with everything that’s in me that I--”

Howard just cuts him off with a wave of being unarmed. “Easy, Richard. I can tell how you feel about her. Being angry at me for knowing doesn’t help any of us in the long run, including her. All it does is give Warren another weapon against you when there’s already so many.” Despite how he wants to protest, Richard knows that his father is right. But he also knows something else: that Alex is a weapon that Thomas Warren has already actively tried to use against him. Effectively, actually considering her safety was the bait for the trap that had led him to this small apartment or whatever the hell it was. 

“I want answers. _You owe me answers_.” His words are a direct bite, and Richard practically throws them with a bearing of his teeth. It is something that Richard had said to Howard’s house more than a few times when he was deep in his cups, be them scotch or sadness but now he’s actually got the chance to finally know what the hell his father has been hiding from him for Richard’s entire life. But he begins with the most obvious and direct question, because it is the most important one, and the one that will get him back to Alex. 

Richard is trying with all of his might not to think about how five minutes has long since past, or how Alex might have written him off entirely considering how he’d never come back when he promised too. Anger and concern war over him, even if they don’t show in Richard’s voice as he just stares his father in the face. But in the pit of his stomach, there’s a white hot fear cutting through and up into his chest. “Who or _what_ is Thomas Warren, and how was he able to look exactly the same fifty-seven years ago as he did when Alex saw him three days ago?” 

“Well,” Warren’s voice rings out inky black in the darkness as he seems to appear from the shadows. “I suppose that’s my cue. Hello Richard.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


	5. Definitive Proof.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex discovers the evidence that Richard intended for her to see before she was kidnapped, and what is in it doesn't make any sense. So, she reaches out to a source that she knows that Strand wouldn't have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, two chapters coming today! Hope you guys like this as it's probably the most case-like fic I've written possibly ever written.

When they got back to Nic’s, Alex ignored all mentions of a shower or a nap. “Like I would be able to sleep without knowing he’s safe, Nic!” Is what she huffs when her best friend tries to keep her from the briefcase. 

“It’s locked Alex. Are you planning on breaking in?” Nic’s voice may be mild, but Alex has known him long enough to hear the accusation under all of it, and she bristles as she takes it from him and just scrolls her fingers over the numbers in order to unlock it without saying anything. “Alex!” Nic just snaps at her, and he looks disturbed. “How do you know the combination?!” 

The accusation hurts, it stings below her skin like a splinter, mostly because Alex knows that it’s something that she’s earned. Still, she can’t help but to be a bit defensive when she replies. “I didn’t steal it or something, Nic! I didn’t break into his briefcase. He told me what it was before one time when we were at his house going over the tapes and he wanted me to see something while he was cooking.” 

“He told you? Alex that really doesn’t sound like him…” Nic’s voice trails off when he doesn’t want to actually say what he’s accusing her of, but when he is accusing Alex of something. 

“I’m not making it up!” She protests loudly. “He did. Things have been better, now that he’s gotten over being so angry at me for going to Turkey. And no, before you ask, it wasn’t because I was having sex with him! Last night was the first time we even kissed or approached talking about anything like our feelings for one another! I was there watching the tapes!” 

“Okay…” Alex knows that Nic doesn’t believe her, and it adds another crack into the way that her heart is already feeling, but she puts it aside with a shake of her head and by refusing to comment on it as she takes out the stack of files that have filled Richard’s briefcase. There’s less of them than she’d thought that there would be, and she’s certainly seen his briefcase more filled before, but unlike then none of the files have anything written on the labels. Scattered at the bottom are some older pictures, but Alex’s seen them, and she’s familiar with those so she doesn’t grab them.

Opening the first one, Alex just sees the photograph carefully secured to the inside cover of the folder, along with what is obviously a photocopy of the back of the picture secured below it. “ _Oh my god_.” Strand doesn’t have many personal pictures in his father’s house, but she’s seen the few of his mother in things enough to recognize her. The man standing next to her is obviously Howard Strand--Alex would recognize the man’s eyes and facial shape as being so close to Richard’s anywhere. But what makes her gasp in the man who is standing next to Howard, holding a beer at what is obviously a party. The caption from the back of the photo is in the swirly, slightly old fashioned and feminine hand and it says, ‘Me, Howard and Thomas, August 1959.’

“Oh my god.” Alex breathes the words again, and she just looks to Nic who comes to sit by her at his kitchen table. TC (Alex Reagan is never in her life going to call him ‘True Companion’. It’s _too_ dumb, even for Nic) Nic’s dog follows and whines softly, shoving her nose into Alex’s hand as if sensing her distress. 

“ _Holy shit_!” Nic’s voice is sharp and shocked. “It can’t be, right? There’s no way!” 

Alex is already reading over the top sheet of the file, which are Richard’s notes etched in his hand. It’s a sort of shorthand of what the file contains, and she just frowns reading it. “According to Strand, and the experts that he’s conferred with, the photo is real. There’s no signs of image manipulations. It dates back to the right era, and has the proper deteroation for something that’s been shoved into an attic for fifty years.” She’s flipping through to the typed reports on official letterheads from the three different experts that Richard sent them too, and all of them have reached the same conclusion. There’s even a report that’s not on a letterhead, and seems to have been done in an email. But it still says the same thing and Alex can’t help but thinking that Richard reached out to unofficial sources as well as known ones, just in case Warren had somehow managed to infiltrate all of the other ones. It seems like something that both of the men would do. 

“And according to this report, even the handwriting is real. It conclusively belongs to Margaret Strand. The dating on the ink goes back to that period as well.” Handing the file over to him, Alex just opens the next one. The picture on it is different, this one with Warren in the background more than the other one, but it’s still obviously him. And he’s in it enough that Margaret had still written him into the caption on the back of the photo. 

“Alex, this is…” Nic is reading the reports more thoroughly than she herself is, but she can see on his face when she looks up from the folder that she’s holding that his face looks pale. 

“Completely terrifying? Yeah I know. And you were there, Nic. You met him when Strand and I did the first time. There’s no way that no one is that identical to a parent or someone unless it’s fiction. But he even appears to be the same age.” 

“Alex, this has to be impossible. This isn’t how things in life are!” Nic protests quickly as she shoves the next file at him, on top of the old one. 

“Richard believed it, Nic! He believed it so much that he thought that it would make me run away from him forever. I think he probably believes that it should scare me enough that I do it. You know as well as I do that Richard barely believes in any of this stuff, even if it comes closer to something like belief it’s definitely nothing on _this_ level.”

“Maybe someone is manipulating him, Alex. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone was doing it. We know that Coralee did it for the entire length of their marriage. This could be some sort of hoax to scare Richard into panicking.” 

“You think he wouldn’t think of that, Nic? I’m sure it’s probably one of the first things that Strand thought of. He even said that at my house! But he said he found them in the attic at his father’s house, from the way that he said it, I know that he didn’t mean that he found them in some conveniently placed photo album! We know that Howard Strand has hidden things in his house before. Remember when I found those letters hidden behind that frame?”

“We don’t know that for sure, Alex. It’s what we expect but it could have been something that someone else planted too. The Strand House was empty for how many years before Strand took possession and moved into it?”

Alex’s voice is a flat accusation: “you believed it when it happened.”

“I know I did, Alex,” Nic just sighs and rubs his hand over his face. It’s a familiar gesture. “But we didn’t have all the information on Warren that we do now and I don’t mean _this_. I mean things like CERN and Coralee working for him. If he’s got the network we think he does then it wouldn’t be hard for him to come up with something like this.”

“Then why take Richard _now_ when he’s got this proof? What would be the reason to plant it and _then_ take him? It doesn’t make any sense!” Alex slams her hands against the table, upsetting their coffee cups and causing the liquid to slosh over the brim as the dog below the table whines worriedly. “Sorry baby,” Alex just says softly as she reaches under the table to pet her reassuringly. No such reassurance is offered to Nic as she looks at him with flat, angry eyes. 

“I don’t know, Alex,” Nic just breathes the words tiredly as he holds up his hands. “I just don’t know. And I’m exhausted. I’m going to take a shower and nap for a few hours and then come to look at this with fresh eyes. But he can’t be the same man. He just can’t be.”

“Just like you couldn’t go missing in a cabin that comes and goes for days that you returned from without the people you left with but with a missing woman who had removed her own arm?!” Alex’s voice is an angry hiss and she spits the words at him. 

Nic just looks at her for a moment with something akin to pity before he says, “you know where the couch is. Just try and get some sleep.” When he closes his bedroom door it’s with a sharpness that Alex knows she’s earned but it still hurts anyway. 

After cleaning up the spilled coffee, Alex goes through the rest of the files. None of the other pictures are as good as the first one, and none of them are as easy to conclusively say that it is Warren. But Richard has tried with all of them. The last folder in the stack is the one that’s most unfinished and Alex instinctively knows that Richard would have waited until he had finished it before he showed it to her if there hadn’t been that photo of her in his office. It’s a group shot, and Maragret’s handwriting is cramped from trying to get all of the names on the back of it to fit. Most of the people don’t have last names, but from Richard’s notes, she can tell that he’s tried to fill them in. 

The majority of the names, most of them in fact have been crossed out by Richard, and he’s written dates next to them when they died or things like ‘in a nursing home: dementia.’ Something that’s not exactly surprising when it’s a sixty year old party of adults for the most part. There’s nothing that stands out about the dates: there’s no clusters of them or obvious patterns that she can spot, and if Richard didn’t, it’s something that Alex feels like she can safely cross off the list. It seemed he’d already gone through the easiest of the names on the list, possibly most of them in alphabetical order or something like it in order to weed out the ones that he could have. The ones that he’s seemed to have the most difficulty with are the children. There are a few notes about them, obviously ones that he’d seemed to remember from when he himself was a child, but he’d not gotten any farther on them than that. 

Getting out her laptop and moving over to the couch, Alex just sits on it and TC just curls up next to her. While it powers on, Alex takes a sip of her coffee and is relieved that the cops hadn’t demanded this too. As soon as the internet connects, Alex navigates over to the cloud and she downloads the photographs that she’d taken of the van that had taken Richard. She doesn’t spot anything new in them, even when she stares at them for so long that her eyes feel like they’re going to cross. But it’s too dark for anything to be seen about the men, the van is newer but not new enough to be notable, and there’s nothing particularly special about it other than the fact that it’s black. 

The woman she saw doesn’t show up in any of them. 

The police had told her that they would contact her when they knew something, but Alex’s dad’s a cop and has been one her entire life and she knows that they only would do that if they found Richard or had any new questions. If they had more, Nic would have known, as he’s her contact person until she can get a new phone. And knowing Nic, he’s got google alerts set up to send him messages if there’s any news about Richard being found. Still, Alex hopefully goes onto the local news site. Richard’s abduction headlines the top of the page, but even though it was updated an hour ago, there’s still nothing about him being found. She tries not to feel the crushing sense of disappointment move through her with that. 

He’ll be found. Richard _has to be_. Alex can’t live with herself if he isn’t. 

So, she’s going to do what she does best, and she’s going to work on what he’d given her, what was possibly so important that Warren had kidnapped Richard to stop it from getting out. Thanks to how often she backs things up, all of her phone contacts are saved within the Macbook, and Alex Reagan never deletes a number. Richard may not have thought of a way to figure out who the kids in the photo were, but Alex does and she knows that he didn’t do it because of who he is. Starting the google call, Alex just says the woman’s name when she answers. “Cheryl, this is Alex Reagan. I don’t have any news yet, but I need your help with something that I believe might help find your brother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


	6. The Unstoppable Force to Your Immovable Object.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the monster that is Thomas Warren, everything is leverage. And if you can twist the knife while you're creating it all the better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some implicit violent threats and electronic stalking mentions in this chapter, because Thomas Warren is the fucking worst. So, be warned for that please.

To say that Richard Strand launched himself at Thomas Warren is a gross and wrong understatement. Strand has spent the better part of two years wanting to punch the man for various reasons, and the first of them had already been simply because of the way that Alex had described him as the only way that she could describe him was ‘ridiculously hot’. He’d not wanted to unpack the reasoning behind it then, or the feelings that had gone along with it in light of her being around Tannis and Simon and Nic. He’d known that he was… attached to her of course because of the jealousy he felt but that was the first time he’d had the urge. It was something that had only grown when Alex uncovered just how connected the man and his money were to Richard and his work. 

If Alex hadn’t been present at that first meeting with Warren, Richard knows that he would have hit him. It would have been violent and it would have been hard. The urge to hit him had only grown to a need to be more violent and after seeing the picture or Alex, after the man had threatened her to her face, the desire to punch Thomas Warren had grown to the need to kill the man. And that had been before he kidnapped Richard and had possibly cost him the chance to have happiness with Alex Reagan. 

“Richard!” There’s a warning note in his father’s voice but Richard doesn’t care. The need to hurt Warren is a pulsing that matches the sound of the sea within his ears when he was kidnapped and he’s only seen this shade of red one other time: when the psychic at the police station after Warren had taken Coralee. The woman had accused him loudly and in front of his daughter of not only killing his wife but torturing her and dismembering her. If he had been alone, even with her making the accusation and demanding that she tell him where to find the body, Richard would have been able to control himself. But Charlie was there, and the woman had turned her attention to his daughter and was about to start screaming in her face before Richard had violently shoved the woman away from her. Strand was willing to take the accusations to him, but he was absolutely not willing to allow the woman to go after _his daughter._

But Charlie isn’t here now and neither is Alex. No, it’s just the two of them and his father and his father doesn’t have the pull that the other woman has over him. So without saying anything, Richard does punch Warren in the face. Twice. He’s not a small man, and he’s strong. Richard had been rowing crew since college and although he doesn’t find himself on the water anymore, he still utilizes the rowing machine at the closest twenty-four hour gym closest to his father’s house. Even without that, the fury inside of him grants him access to even more strength. 

But Warren doesn’t move other than the involuntary snap back of his head, and he doesn’t stop smiling. Not even when Richard plants a third punch in the area of his stomach. 

Instead Warren just smiles benevolently like he would have at a child who is hitting him with nothing more than the force of a small fists, and asks softly: “got that out of your system now, Richard?” 

“Not in the slightest,” the words are a snarl, and Richard starts to move to hit him again, but he’s blocked by an invisible wall that he strikes with such force that he cries out in furious pain. “You son of a bitch. What are you?” 

“Now that is an interesting question considering who’s asking it, isn’t it _Dr. Strand_. I’m sure your skeptical followers would be so disappointed in you.” Warren’s voice is bitter snake oil as Richard prowls the edge of the barrier as if he’s testing it. “But then again you always _have believed_ , haven’t you? There’s no recorder or reporter here, Richard. No one to share what you say out into the world. Just us.”

The mention of a reporter gets a rise out of Richard though, as Warren knew that it would. His voice is an angry, determined hiss, a knife wielded that would go through any man. Normal man, anyway; Warren is anything but normal. “If you hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

“I suppose you could try,” Warren looks like a seabird as he tilts his head to look at Richard, studying him with an amused look on his face. “But you already know that may well be impossible. But I am surprised you figured it out. How did you do it?”

“I didn’t, not at first.Alex did. She’s known there was something wrong with you and your eyes from the start.”

“You know, she’s smarter than I have given her credit for. Of course, I’ve known she was your type since I put her in your path. Oh, I didn’t mold her like I tried to do with Coralee but I put her in your path nonetheless. I learn from my mistakes, Richard. But I don’t think that you do.”

“You’re insane if you think that you put Alex in my path.” The words are a sharp hiss, and Richard stops his pacing to glare at the man. “Alex Reagan put herself in my path.”

“Did she?” Warren’s voice is mild and soft with an arched brow. “Funny that when I was the one who made sure that your name came up in all those interviews. Funny that when I suggested the paranormal to Nic Silver.”

“You didn’t. He would have said if he knew you.” Richard’s voice is flat and cold. He may not like Alex’s boss but he does feel that he is a stand up man who wouldn’t do that to her. Even if he does other things that drive the both of them insane. 

“Oh he doesn’t know the name or the face. But he knows me nonetheless. The internet is such a handy tool. I only wish I had it years ago.” Warren sounds like a smug son of a bitch and the urge to punch the barrier rises again. “Uh uh, Richard, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I need you alive to open the doors, but I definitely don’t need you whole to be able to do it. I like you, I like your spirit, but you don’t want to push me on this. I’m not a fan of physical violence.”

“If you think I’m going to open whatever door you believe in, you’re insane. I never will.”

“Oh. You won’t right now of course.” Warren isn’t deterred in the least. “You don’t have the proper leverage yet. But you will.” The threat is implicit in his voice and Richard hears the sound of the sea in his head once more. 

“You leave her the hell out of this, Warren!”

The laughter that Warren makes is ice water and malice mixed into the perfect cocktail. “I don’t need to do anything to bring her into it honestly. Alex Reagan has always acted with a reckless abandon that’s a beauty to watch. At current I have it on good authority that she’s currently on Nicodemus Silver’s couch crying and hugging his poorly named dog and repeating something about ‘five minutes’.”

Relief and heartbreak war inside of him, equally at odds. Alex thinks he left. Alex thinks he _chose_ to leave her. But he believes that she meant it when she said that they were done if he didn’t come back. If she thinks they’re done, he realizes, then she won’t come _looking_. Grief is as familiar as oxygen is to his blood. He can live through grief. He can’t live through the guilt of something happening to her in addition to that grief. Turning away from Warren and his father, Richard just sits on the bed that he woke up on, and then he stretches out and pulls the blanket on top of himself. With his arms below his head he mutters: “you’re going to be waiting for a long time, Warren. You may be immortal,” the word is said with the typical Richard Strand scorn, “but I’m not.”

“Always did like how stubborn you are, Richard,” Warren crows, Howard flinches and Richard doesn’t respond other than to close his eyes below his glasses. “But I think you’re forgetting something: Alex Reagan is as equally stubborn as you are. She’s the unstoppable force to your immovable object. And while she’s broken right now. And she _is_.” Richard flinches at that however he doesn’t want to because he can see the heartbreak and the pain in her dark eyes. He’s seen it enough before that he doesn’t need the picture of it magnified by what Warren said, but his brain refuses to show him anything else even as the other man goes on. “Eventually I’ll send her the evidence and then she’ll come looking for you. Of course she’s already quit the show so she won’t have the support system of that..”

Against his will, Richard asks: “she quit?”

“Did you think she’d do something else with you abandoning her once again, Richard? She might have waited, held onto hope a little while longer if you hadn’t been so yourself and disappeared for what a total of ten and a half months over the three years you’ve been working together? I think that’s right. Six months looking for Coralee, three with Charlie and the various weeks between. How could the poor girl _not_ feel abandoned? Especially after telling you that if you didn’t come back that night that you shouldn’t come back.”

“How do you know that?!” Anger flushes in Richard’s voice and he rises to his feet again. “You can’t know that!”

“Do you think I wouldn’t have gone further than the camera across the street, Richard? I’ve had recording devices in her apartment since she’d started focusing her attention onto me. I heard everything. How much she loves you. How _you_ love _her_. How many times she’s cried over you when you’ve been cruel to her. How much she missed you when you left her alone. How many times she’s cursed your name. Oh, you’d be amazed what I have her saying. And how she says it, of course.” Without speaking, Richard just sits down heavily on the bed again, not looking at Warren as he fells blow after blow on Richard and his feelings for Alex. 

For the first time, Howard speaks. “Stop this, Warren. You don’t need to rub salt into his wounds.”

“No one asked for your opinion, Howie.” With the way Warren used the nickname, the older man flinches, and he looks down at his gnarled fingers. “Do you need a reminder?”

“No!” There’s panic in Howard’s voice. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Good boy.” The words are almost cooed like one would to a pet before Warren touches Howard’s head and the man starts to tremble. “But it’s all a moot point I’m afraid. Alex Reagan will come to find you. She’ll choose to come find you alone. I’m going to make sure she has the evidence you gathered. That she has enough to come alone. And then Richard, you’ll open the door or the last thing that the broken, bleeding, sobbing, in terrible pain woman you love will ever see is you refusing to save her life. Think about it, Richard.”

And then he was gone, leaving the Strands in darkness once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


	7. "You don't question Thomas Warren." "I did."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and Nic identify the children from the pictures that Strand found with some help from Cheryl, and then Alex receives some pieces of the puzzle from someone else who has known Thomas Warren since he was a child. She was right: it's all connected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I am kind of the worst and totally forget that I hadn't updated this in a while even though I've had four finished chapters sitting on my computer for weeks! So today you get two chapters and my apologies! Mentions of drug addiction and ODing in this chapter, in case anyone is sensitive to that! Not anyone you know.

“Okay,” Alex says quickly, a notebook that she’d stolen from Nic in one hand and a pen in the other. She’s still sitting cross legged on his sofa, but the shadows in the room have deepened as the sun has started to set in Seattle. “So we have Michael Bennet, age fourteen, Emma Flores age eight, Caddie Hayes age ten, James Foster age eleven, and Clark Long age nine?” Alex is both reading the names back to Cheryl, and to Nic who is sitting next to her on his own laptop, doing the thing that he’s best at: research and looking into public records. He looks better than Alex knows that she does, but even then he still looks tired as hell. Cheryl on the other end of the call doesn’t look much better. 

“That’s what I could find in my mother’s other photo albums. I think they’re right, but I can’t be sure considering the crowd shot. But while the man wasn’t at any of the other parties over that summer, all of the kids were. And the family names of most of them I remember at least for parts of our childhood. The Fosters and the Bennets moved out before we went to high school, but Michael would have been gone a long time before then. I don’t ever remember hearing his name or seeing pictures of him when we played over at the Bennet house before everything.” 

Alex wants to push on what it was that had caused the change, but she knows that she doesn’t have time for that now. There’s too much else that she needs to work on. While what Howard Strand was doing does matter, the life of the town around them doesn’t. “So you played with all of these kids? When you were little?” 

“Not really, no. They were definitely too old for us to play with by the time we were old enough to. But most of them had younger brothers or sisters who would come to our parties. For the most part anyway, I think they stopped when we were seven. I don’t know what happened, but over the summer our families just kind of… not being as friendly. My mother was always polite in the grocery store when she saw them, and they were polite in return, but that was it. Richard asked about it once, but our father… Let’s just say he didn’t react well.” 

Well, that’s definitely an interesting age, isn’t it? And Alex can’t help but to ask, “so they stopped after Richard recorded the video with you and the tall men?” 

Cheryl’s response is a soft whispered: “yes.” Then she adds more certainly: “but I didn’t think about it that way at the time. I don’t know if Richard did. But… He was always so much smarter than I was with this sort of thing.” 

“What sort of thing? The supernatural?” Nic just shoots Alex a look for a moment, and of course she ignores it while waiting for Cheryl to answer. 

“No. Well, yes _that_ too, but that’s not what I meant. He was always better at figuring out Father’s moods and reasonings and things like that. Richard always felt like he had to protect me from them as much as he could, I think. So he was better at reading him. I think if it was because of that and Richard figured it out, he wouldn’t have told me anyway.” Cheryl just sighs, and she looks so tired that Alex’s heart goes out to her. 

“Cheryl, maybe you should rest. I know it’s getting late out there, and we’ve been doing this for a long time now. You have to be exhausted.” 

“I am,” Cheryl admits, and she presses some of her hair from her face. “But I want to help you find Richard. I’ve not been a very good sister for the last twenty years, but I do love him. And I owe him this, especially considering he was even more a victim in what happened than I was.” 

Curiosity gets the better of Alex and she just asks: “did he ever tell you what happened with Coralee? After she came back and saved him I mean.” 

“No, he didn’t reach out. I don’t know that I would have accepted if he did, honestly. But Charlie sent me an email and told me to listen to the show so I did. I tried to call him to apologize, but he never called me back.” She sounds sad by that, and it’s easy in that moment for Alex to remember that the two of them were twins. She can’t imagine what it’s like losing a sibling, nevermind someone who’s been connected to you since conception. Alex wants to promise that she’ll make Richard call his sister, but she doesn’t know if that’s a promise that she’s going to be able to keep even if she… no _when_ she finds him. 

So the best that she can do is offer, “when we find him, I’ll make sure that I tell him how worried about him you were. Are, I mean. And how much work you did to try and help me find him.”

Cheryl’s voice is immediate but it’s soft and it reminds Alex of Richard so badly that it’s a shot to her side. “I don’t know if that will be enough, Alex. But thank you. I think you’re right and I should try and get some sleep. Please call me immediately when you get some news.”

“I will Cheryl. And thank you.” The other woman doesn’t respond before she ends the call, and Alex just stretches a bit and rolls her neck before looking to Nic expectantly. 

“You really should take your own advice and try and rest some, Alex. You look like hell.” When she doesn’t say anything but keeps looking at him, Nic just sighs. “I really should just hold this ransom until you try and sleep but I know as soon as I leave you alone you’re going to bust out your laptop anyway.”

“You’re right. I’m going to. And I can’t sleep, Nic. You know the statistics on abduction just as well as I do. Time is running out on that twenty-four hour window.” Alex can’t stop herself from anxiously looking at the clock. The window has three hours left in on it, and there’s still been no sign of Strand or whatever van or car they transferred him into. The first van was found in a parking garage less than four blocks from her house and it had taken so long for the cops to find it because they had started off thinking that the van would have gotten further away from her before they changed. The police hadn’t even found it—someone had called it in to the tip line. 

“Okay so let’s start with who we can eliminate right off the bat. James Foster was killed in Vietnam when he was nineteen. His body was returned and he was buried in the same cemetery as Strand’s mother. Caddie Hayes ODed in New York City when she was twenty-one. Probably from heroin-- one of those bad batch things. She was cremated. Emma Flores got married and changed her name, but I can’t find any record of her after that.”

Alex just sighs softly, she can’t help it. “So what do we know about Michael Bennett and Clark Long?”

“Well, that’s where it gets interesting. Clark Long lives in Boston and it’s too late to call him there. But Michael Bennett is in Portland, Oregon.”

“That’s where Richard was today. Yesterday I mean. He said he was meeting with ‘an old contact’ but he was weird about it. You know how cagey Strand can be sometimes. Did you find a phone number for him?” 

“Alex, it’s late and you really should try and sleep. Besides Michael Bennet is in his seventies. He’s probably in bed already!” Alex just holds out her hand for the number, and Nic sighs again. “I shouldn’t give this to you, you know…”

“But you’re going to. Because I could just find it myself and you’d rather I called with you here and sitting next to me than me spending the time looking for it and calling him even later than it is now.” Which is why Nic writes the number on a post it note, but he doesn’t hand it to her yet. 

“After you get off the phone with Bennet, promise me that you’re going to try and sleep, Alex. You’re not going to be any help to Strand or to trying to find him if you just crash like you’ve done before.” 

Holding her hand out to him, Alex just nods and crooks her pinky out. “I promise I’ll try, alright?” Nic hooks his pinky against her own before they break them apart, and then he hands her post it. 

At first, it doesn’t seem like Michael Bennet is going to answer, and Nic is about to remind her of her promise before an older man’s voice comes out of the speakers on her laptop with a question: “hello?”

“Mr. Bennet? I’m so sorry to be calling you this late, and I wouldn’t be if it wasn’t important.” There’s some level of desperation in Alex’s voice that she can’t keep out of it as she continues: “my name is Alex Reagan, and I’m a friend of Dr. Richard Strand. I believe you met with him yesterday?” 

Alex just holds her breath for a moment before he replies: “Richard? Yes, I met with him. Are you really Richard’s Alex?” 

While she colors when Bennett calls her ‘Richard’s Alex’ and entirely looks away from Nic as she’s doing it, she manages to keep that out of her voice when she responds: “yes, I’m his Alex. I’m sorry to call you so late, but I don’t know if you’re aware or not, but Richard was abducted from outside my apartment last night. I’m trying to find him. Can you tell me what you and he spoke about?” 

“The police came and spoke to me a little while ago. It’s why I was still awake. I saw it on the evening news and called the tip line.” Alex tries not to be angry that no one had told her this, and reminds herself that this is how investigations like this work, but she _is_ even as she manages to keep it out of her voice. Especially when Michael Bennet goes on. “He was here to talk about Thomas Warren and how I knew him. Do you know about Thomas Warren, Alex?” 

“Yes. I’ve met him.” 

“Then you know why Richard was here asking: because he doesn’t seem to appear to age.” The man doesn’t sound surprised about that, which surprises Alex. 

“You knew that about him, Mr. Bennett?” The surprise laces with the curiosity in her voice, and she shares a look with Nic at that. 

“Yes. The first time I met Thomas Warren was when I was four years old. He’d known my parents even before then. I’d known him best when I was a child, but I’ve seen him at various points in my life and he’d never changed.”

“Your parents knew him before then? How did they know him?” Alex is forcing herself to treat this like any other interview, and she’s glad that she’d let Nic talk her into recording while she’d spoken to Cheryl the first time, and now Bennett. 

“I’m not sure how they knew him, just that they did. They never explained, and if you’d met Thomas Warren, you know that he’s not the sort of man that one asks questions of.” 

“I did.” It’s reflexive for Alex to say it, and Nic frowns at her even as she’s immediately apologizing. “Sorry, it just sort of slipped out.” 

Thankfully Michael Bennett just laughs. “Not at all, dear girl. Richard said that you were a spitfire.” Which of course makes Alex want to question him about exactly what he’d said, but there’s not time for that. “But to answer your next question, Alex, no, I didn’t question that about Thomas. I’d seen too much in my lifetime for that by the time our paths had crossed at a point when he should have been much older than he actually was.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve always had this… Gift I guess. Or a curse, depending on how I’m looking at it at the time. I could see things, find people and the like. And I could definitely see spirits. And not all spirits are good ones, Alex.” 

Alex just swallows as she and Nic exchange another look before she asks: “Did Warren know about that? That you could see these… not good spirits?” 

“He did. He’s the one who helped me with that. He’s helped with that every few years or so, depending on what’s going on in my life. He helped me first when I was eight, and then again when I was fourteen. The periods between then have gotten longer, thank god, but they tend to happen when I’m dealing with something difficult in my life.” 

Despite how Alex already feels like she knows the answer, she asks: “how did he help you?” 

“With the Shadow Generator, of course.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are life.


	8. This is bigger than you!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Richard demands that Howard start to explain things, he reveals where he'd intervened in the story that Richard thought he knew and reveals just how much is at stake beyond Richard and Alex.

“Richard…” Howard’s voice is soft, and he looks like he might try to put a hand on his son before Richard pulls away. 

“Save it.” The words are spat. “I have no time for platitudes. Especially from you, Howard, when this is all your fucking fault!” 

“I can’t deny that, Richard. It is all my fault, but there’s so much that you don’t understand!” 

“Then tell me! I told you that you owe me answers and I mean it. How long has Thomas Warren been interfering in my life? I found the pictures you hid in the trunk in the attic. Why did you hide them there?” 

Howard just sighs softly and runs his hands over his face as his shoulders stoop. There’s a fraileness in his father that Richard would have never expected, but it doesn’t purchase him any sympathy. It can’t, not when Alex is on the line. Instead, Richard just sits there in stony silence until Howard starts to speak again. “I hid them there so that Warren wouldn’t find them after I went to confront him with some photographs that I’d found. Because I knew that at some point you would find them and need them. When you needed them the most, when it was the right time you’d find them. And I knew that Warren would want them destroyed. I’ve hidden many things along the way for you to find, Richard.” 

“Like what?” The word has less venom in it than the last but not by much. 

“The letters that I’d exchanged about you being the Mantle of the Dragon for one.” 

Richard scoffs loudly at that. “Yes, because you hid them so well: behind a picture frame in your house. Besides, I didn’t even find them. Alex did.” 

“But she found them for you. Isn’t that the same thing considering everything between the two of you?” 

“No it isn’t!” The protest is loud and Richard throws his hands up in the air at that. “Alex Reagan is her own damned person. And she only found them because she was snooping when I’d given her an inch and she took a country mile.” But that’s definitely not something that he’s as angry about as he should be. As he had been at the time. But it had all gotten lost in what had happened after that with Coralee and Warren. 

Howard doesn’t say anything, and meets the fire in his son’s gaze with a calm resignation. Richard hates that, and he balks at the feeling that it inspires: his being a child when his father would do the same thing in the face of Richard’s rage as if it didn’t come from the Strand line in his blood. Richard gets up and begins to pace angrily, the emotion giving him energy even if he’d not eaten or had tea in quite a while. 

Looking at his watch, Howard just said replies, “depending on if you pissed him off too much, someone should be bringing dinner in soon.”

For a moment, Richard just stops and stares at his father who shrugs nonchalantly. “Where did you think you got your abilities, Richard? Especially considering what you know of how obsessed Warren is with our bloodline.”

“I’m not psychic.” The words are flat and angry. 

“You May deny your gifts, but that doesn’t make them not there, son. They’re just dormant unless you feel the need to force them out. Like with Bobby Maimes. Like with Coralee. You followed her trail for a long time before it was blocked. I know. I’m the one who blocked it.”

“You blocked it?” The words are spat, livid and living with rage. “You denied me my wife and cost me everything?”

“I had no choice, Richard!” Howard’s voice is desperate and angry. “You have no idea what Warren can do. You have no idea what he threatened to do! I was trying to save your life! And Charlie’s.”

“Leave my daughter out of this!” Richard just roars the words at his father, seeing red again. 

“She can’t be left out of this, Richard! Anymore than myself or you or Cheryl can be. She’s a Strand too! Do you think that Warren hasn’t touched her life somehow? Do you think Warren hasn’t touched her son Harry’s life?”

Richard just sits heavily down, because there’s no way that his father can know about that. His having a grandson isn’t even something that he’d told Alex about when he’d gotten home from Italy. Burying his face in his hands and remembering the little boy’s solemn face, Richard just sighs. “Are they safe?”

“For the moment. Your gifts vastly outweigh theirs. But if you do something stupid Warren will take them and mold Harry into what he can’t mold you into. That is what is at stake here, Richard. It’s more than just us. It’s more than just Alex. It’s Charlotte and Harry and the entire damned world.” The resignation in Howard’s words strikes Richard then, and the heavy sigh comes again. 

“Explain it to me. Now. All of the things that you’ve kept hidden from me my entire life. How did Warren take you? Why does he want our family so damned badly? How is he the way that he is?”

“This is going to be a long conversation, Richard,” Howard warns. “And you’re not going to want to hear much of it. You’re going to want to deny much of it. But if you want the full truth, I’ll give it to you.”

“Just.” Richard starts as he sits down heavily. “Get on with it, Howard.”

“You know about Oneida. You know about John Noyes and the sort of stirpiculture that he was doing there. You know about Daniel Guiteau and how that’s where the Strand family started. But where the story starts is far older than that, Richard.” Howard just sits down next to his son and begins to tell him the story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PNWS boom. Yep, there's a Strand grandkid. I think the idea came out in the tbtp relisten discord and I just was like "okay this makes too much sense!" so. Yeah. Also of course Richard didn't mention it to Alex. Because he's Richard and would deem it as both dangerous and immaterial to the matter at hand. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are love.


	9. Me? He wants me to find him?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oneida connections are revealed more fully, someone who has knowledge of what the exorcism machines are explains them, and Alex hears either a terrible threat or promise, depending on your point of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I lied. Ya'll are getting four chapters today. Because the next one is one of the hardest things I've written and I'm tired of holding onto it in my pocket heh.

It takes a moment for Alex to recover from hearing about the Shadow Generator before she moves into: “Mr Bennett, did Richard show you pictures of what they might look like?”

“He did. He had two different ones, one was a sketch and the other one was more new. For most of my life, the one that Thomas used was somewhere in the middle. More modern than the sketch but not as fancy as what Richard called ‘the screen cap’.” Bennet says it in a way that makes Alex feel like he’s directly quoting and she glances at Nic who is as pale as she feels before he just gets up and goes to put the coffee pot on. 

He’s not sleeping now anymore than she’s going to. 

“When was the last time Warren used the machine on you, Mr Bennett?” Alex is using her best professional voice even though her emotions are swirling beneath the surface, and her mind keeps giving her the image of Richard connected to one against his will. From what had been described it seems almost like torture, and she has no doubt that Strand would have fought them on it tooth and nail. 

“Oh, it’s been years now. I’m not as young as I once was, and Thomas always said that the machine worked best on the young.”

“In the photographs, there were four other children attending that party with you. Do you know if those other kids had the same sort of gifts you did? Did Warren use the machine on them as well?”

“They did. Well, to various degrees anyway. For some of them the gift was less invasive. For poor Caddie it was always worse. If I’m honest I would say that she was the one Thomas was always the most interested in. She could always see spirits and the shadow things. Had one that she had named ‘Tall Paul’. I never saw anything like it. That one almost followed her around like a puppy. She only needed to think of something and it would get it for her. That led to a lot of problems for her family. She was in trouble a lot and there were always accusations of theft around her. Caddie would swear up and down that she didn’t touch whatever was taken, but it was always there in her possessions. It got worse when she got upset. Paul would attack the people who were hurting her.”

“Attack them how?” Alex’s voice is soft and she keeps seeing poor Sebastian Torres’ face in her mind's eye. She can hear him saying that Alex can see him too and she just shivers as if someone had walked over her grave. 

“Not directly if that’s what you’re thinking. He could never manifest in that way. But there were… a lot of falls. A lot of things that were purported to be accidents but were actually his doing. One girl who had made Caddie cry ended up drowning in a swimming pool because her hair had gotten caught in a drain. That was what had made her family finally accept Thomas’ offer.”

“His offer? I don’t understand.”

“Yes you do, Alex. You can lie to yourself but you can’t lie to me. His offer was the machine. A way of sort of siphoning off that extra energy within her. Within me. Within all of the children that he’s done it too. He’s never said what he uses it for, but it’s definitely used for something.”

“What do _you_ think it’s used for?”

“I think it’s one of the ways that keeps him young, honestly. Yes, it helps us and it does. But it also helps him too.”

“But you still let him do it to you? As an adult that understands that?” Despite trying to keep her fear and disgust from her voice, Alex _can’t_ and thankfully Bennett doesn’t seem to take offense to that. 

“If you knew that the things within you, the power, the abilities, the spirits around you, could hurt the people that you love wouldn’t you make that trade off? Jimmy thought that he could get rid of them by going off to war and playing soldier. Caddie thought that she could just drug them away and it killed her. Emma thought that if she just ignored them hard enough, they’d go away and she just disappeared. Clark and me? We kept doing what worked: we kept going to Thomas and his machine.” 

“Clark has kept doing the machine as well? So he’s been in contact with Warren like you have? Have you been in contact with him too?” 

“We’re not in contact much anymore. He’s struggling with his health a lot. He’s in an assisted living facility in Boston. It’s been longer for him since the machine than it has for me. Clark’s gift was never as strong as the rest of ours was, and he wanted to keep it that way. He wanted to keep all of those things away from himself and his family.” 

“Clark has a family?” Alex’s eyes move accusingly to Nic’s who just shrugs before he sets down the cup of coffee in front of her, strong black and with sugar just like it’s always been ever since they’d started studying for finals together. 

“Yeah, he married a Chinese girl there. Never saw two people more in love. But something happened that he wouldn’t talk about. She left him, and his son ended up taking her name after the divorce. Didn’t want nothing to do with his father. I heard he died in a car accident a few years back.” 

“Did any of the other kids have any children or families?” Nic just scribbles on a piece of paper and shows it to Alex, his blue eyes wide and staring. ‘Katie.’ It’s all Alex can do to nod, and she knows her own eyes are wide too. Oneida had always felt like a big piece of something that they were missing, and now it seemed like they had it. Or at least something close to it. 

“I don’t really know, honestly. I never have, and if the others had children Thomas didn’t tell me about it.” 

“Mr. Bennett, does your family have any connections to Upstate New York?” Alex is trying to keep her voice as mild as possible, but she can’t really do it fully. 

“Richard asked me the same thing you know.” It takes a lot for Alex not to whimper. “You’re talking about Oneida, aren’t you?” 

“Yes,” Alex admits in a surprised tone. “I am.” 

“My family came from there, and I know a few of the other kids’ families did too. Caddie’s definitely did. Clark’s too. Jimmy’s I think. As for the others, I don’t know. But at this point, given everything it wouldn’t surprise me if it did. You do know that’s where Howard’s grandfather was from, don’t you? Daniel?” 

“ _What?_ ” Alex whispers the word, almost choking on it for a moment. “Are you sure Howard Strand’s grandfather’s name was Daniel? Do you know his last name?” 

“It’s Strand, of course.” Alex isn’t relieved, because that’s too much of a coincidence for her, even if she can practically hear Richard telling her that it was one of them. But it doesn’t feel like one, and the truth of the word sits heavily in Alex’s gut. She was right, but somehow this feels bigger than Alex herself had even imagined as she worked through things on the wall of her office when she was trying to explain them to Richard. 

“Did Richard ask you about anyone else? Any other people with last names like Reese and Torres and Hochman and Yi and Franks…” All of those names are seared into Alex’s memory, and they’ll never not be. Each one brings a visceral picture to her mind, formed within her nightmares: the cabin and it’s cross, the bird webcam, Simon’s ‘Hello Alex’, the way Katie had just stared at the camera, the whispers on Robbie’s baby monitor and of course the hanging body of Maddie Franks at the end of an extension cord. Without saying anything, Nic just wraps the blanket from the back of the sofa around Alex’s shoulders, and TC comes up and rests his head in her lap. 

It doesn’t help. Nothing will ever help those images. 

“He asked, but I’ve got the same answer for you that I’ve had for him, I’m afraid: I don’t know any of those names. They’re not people I’ve ever heard of. They may be connected, but it’s not a connection that I can make for you, I’m afraid.” 

Letting out a breath of air, Alex just asks one final question: “Mr. Bennet, do you know where Thomas Warren is? How to get in touch with him directly if you need to?” 

“I’m afraid not--That’s the thing about Thomas Warren: he’s always the one who finds you. And I don’t know if you want to hear this or not, Alex, but when he wants you to know where to find him, he’s going to let you know.” 

“He _wants me to find him_?” Alex doesn’t mean to squeak the words, but she does. 

“One thing that I’m very sure of in this, Alex, even if Thomas has never said it’s that he’s going to need you and Richard, but I know that he is. And I know that you’re not going to be able to stop yourself from going. You won’t want to either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PNWS Boom. 
> 
> Comments and kudos are love..


	10. Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard Strand tells Richard how he became involved with Warren, what he was doing for all those years, what happened to Bobby Maimes really, and the terrible secret about his wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this chapter is a doozy, and I want to warn for miscarriages, child death and suicide in it.

“You know the myth of Tiamat, Richard. I taught it to you when you were both young. It was Cheryl’s favorite bedtime story, but you always hated it. I think that you always hated it because of the passion that it inspired in me. You know I was a proud member of her cult.” Howard begins quickly, as if the words have always been bursting to get out of him. 

“I was introduced to the Tiamat myth young, just like I had introduced it to you, though I didn’t have my parents to thank for it. Warren was the one who had told me of it, and of _her_ power at an edge when it would have captured my imagination. And it did it in ways that you don’t even understand. Or didn’t then, but maybe you do now. 

“Warren told me of our family’s place in restoring her to greatness and to power. He told me that the gifts that we’d had were ones that had come from her because of our service to her. Warren then told me that I was going to be the one who found her Horn and I would give it to the one who would be able to use it and would bring back the glory of her destruction. While I feared that destruction, Warren would always awasage those fears by telling me that we, members of our family line were her children in the same way that the ancient Summaerian gods were. That we were loved and protected by our mother goddess as long as we didn’t follow in the path of our divine siblings who had slayed their father and attempted to undo all of her work. 

“I am not ashamed to admit that I believed him, Richard. That I bought into this entire thing hook, line and sinker. I was a lonely child, someone who always felt left out and alone because my father had died when I was young and that my mother didn’t have very much money. We lived mostly on what work she could do and the small amount of money that we’d received from his pension. I was bullied in school and I was desperate for any amount of power that I could get my hands on. When a rich man tells you that you’re the child of a goddess who can destroy his bullies, you believe it. You become desperate to believe it.” 

“Oh _good_.” Richard snaps the words as he pulls away from his father with a scowl on his face, and his arms crossed against his chest. “You’re willing to damn your children, your grandchild and your great grandchild over the fact that you were bullied. I’m so sorry for you, Howard!” 

“I told you that you wouldn’t like the story, Richard. That you wouldn’t like the places that it goes. This story is mine and it’s probably the last thing that I’m going to be able to give you, boy. Do you want it or not?” 

“ _Fine_. Please continue with your little fairy tale.” 

Howard just sighs as he goes on. “Before you ask, Richard. No, I didn’t see shadow men. I believe that I was spared that fate because I couldn’t do it as well as find the Horn like I was meant to do.” He pauses for a moment but with no response from Richard, the elder Strand just continues: “Warren offered my mother money for the ability to teach me things, to sharpen my gifts. And I did, Richard. I can’t tell you how many times I had been told that the gifts that I possessed were some of the most powerful that had been seen in years. My ego needed to hear it, and I practically glowed with it. But I also started to use my gifts in ways that weren’t entirely noble. I learned how to read men’s thoughts to find their darkest secrets, and I used them to blackmail people. 

“Warren only encouraged this in me, taking me to New York City to meet other rich men. Men who had taken to collecting things from the Ancient world. Things that could be beneficial to my hunt for the Horn. If nothing else the things that I stole from them, and how I did it built my reputation for being able to find antiquities, and I used that to my advantage until my alleged death.”

Howard pauses there, and he takes a sip of water while he eyed his son who just sat in all of the silence of the dead. Letting out a soft sigh, he just continues on. “When I was sixteen, the war started, and Warren encouraged me to join up with it. I didn’t realize then but he was pulling the strings behind the scenes and making certain that I was able to serve, making sure that all of the places where I was stationed were ones that were beneficial to me in my pursuit of the Horn. London at first, and then Egypt and other parts of what is now the Middle East but what was once ancient Babylon. 

“While other men fought nazis and the Italians, I was involved in antiquity removal. I was trained there under an archeologist who I learned later was another member of the Order from Turkey. It was he who the letters about you were exchanged, but he was an old man by then. Still, we found many things related to Tiamat. But none of them were her horn. Warren paid us for them and he paid well. I was a wealthy man by the time the war was over.”

“So among everything else you were a war profiteer. Great. Just when I think my estimation of you can’t sink any lower.”

“And you’re right to have a low opinion of me, Richard.” 

Richard just snorts, a sharp sound that had made many undergraduate students shiver in fear. “I have never and will never need your permission for that, Howard.”

“Yes, well.” Howard shifts a bit and he just rubs the back of his neck before he continues. “Following the war, I came home and attended the University of Syracuse while I continued the work that I had begun there. It was easy for me to transition into a graduate student. I found no need for me to look anywhere else for studies when what I was really doing was underwritten by Thomas Warren and his various companies. It wasn’t Daiva Corp, not then but it was his money and influence nonetheless.”

Perhaps it was the time around Alex, or perhaps it was Richard needing to have evidence but he just asks sharply: “what was the company called then?”

“You’re getting hung up on details that don’t matter, boy! Do you think Warren is going to let you go so you have a chance to corroborate my story?! Warren isn’t. You’re right where he’s always wanted you! I’m trying to give you insight and stupid questions like that aren’t helping!”

“So then tell me something that will help me then!” Richard just roars the words. “All you’re telling me is things that I had already worked out for myself!” 

“Then be quiet and let me finish for god’s sake!”

“Which one, Howard? _Tiamat’s_?!” The scorn is obvious in Richard’s words. “Same old Father. Getting angry instead of getting on with it!”

Howard is silent for a moment and Richard knows from experience with Alex that what he’s doing is counting so that he doesn’t become more angry. It’s something that he wants to press against, but he wants the rest of the story more. So he just waits until his father starts again. 

“I was almost done with my PhD when Warren introduced me to your mother. It took me longer than it should have, longer than it needed to because my interest in academia had waned. I was already a man of means and reputation, both legitimate and not and didn’t see the need in having a doctorate. Warren insisted, so I went along with it. Him introducing me to Peggy was merely an additional incentive. 

“Your mother was in her senior year at the time. I bet you didn’t know that did you. She was studying psychology too. Women at that time didn’t normally go into the field, but your mother was insistent on it. Peggy always was so insistent. A will of iron that one.” Howard’s voice was softer than Richard could ever remember hearing it be, and it doesn’t escape his notice that his father had never told him of this before. 

They both seem to be lost in their memories of the woman that they both had loved and lost for a long moment before Howard continues. 

“I loved her from the moment I set eyes on her. Willfully, madly, entirely head over heels in love with her. I didn’t leave her side the entire night at Warren’s party. I spent every moment with her that I could, throwing myself into my studies so I could graduate alongside her. It was almost a foregone conclusion that we would marry, but I asked her anyway and she agreed of course. We were married that fall and Warren gave us a year of simply being together and newlyweds. We traveled and I showed her things all over the world that year. But then eventually she was starting to show signs of being pregnant and we returned to America. 

“The man I knew as Thomas Warren was fucking _delighted._ You would have thought that he was the baby’s grandfather. But in her fourth month, Peggy miscarried. She miscarried twice more before 1959.” Howard just goes silent for a moment, and Richard needs to clear his throat before his father continues. 

“He got impatient then. No more trips out of the country. No more stress. Nothing more than Peggy and I trying to get her pregnant again. When she finally was, and she passed the period where the other miscarriages had happened, Warren made a demand. He wanted us to move to what he called ‘his town in Pennsylvania.’ The house and the community there was allegedly his gift to us.” Howard doesn’t bother to keep the bitterness from his voice. 

“You saw the pictures. You know what was there. Warren was taking the lessons that he’d learned from Oneida and implementing them on a smaller scale. No more stirpiculture, because he didn’t _need_ to at that point. All of the bloodlines that he wanted to be connected already were. Instead it was just the families living there, the children raised together so that Warren could have access when he needed them. 

“Oh, it wasn’t as simple as he’d thought it would be, because if there’s one thing that he always did, it was that Thomas Warren underestimated us mere mortals. We were indebted to him of course, we all were. He’d introduced us to our spouses, given us houses, made sure we had income or jobs of some kind and he thought we owed him everything. But none of that meant that people were willing to hand their children over to him. Not at first. 

“I didn’t understand that’s what he wanted. Not then. It wasn’t until the two of us were waiting in the waiting room for your mother to give birth. He brought the very best Cuban cigars, the very best brandy. He was acting like he was your grandfather and maybe he was in a way. But he was so excited for your birth that it made my blood run cold.” Richard doesn’t want to admit it, but he can feel his own blood running cold at that too. He knew Warren was in his life, but to be there when he was born was something else entirely. 

Howard just sighs and goes on. “The day that you and your sister were born was the happiest day of my life. It was also one of the darkest. When I was allowed to finally see you and Cheryl. Warren went with me. The nurse put you both in my arms and we were shocked. There was no sign that there had been twins during her pregnancy. Your mother was a tiny woman, and she looked huge of course but we’d just assumed it was because of that. All of us did, including Peggy herself. But there you both were.

“I think Warren was about to ask which of you was born first before the nurse told me it was you. Gender never mattered to him—it was only the birth order of the children in his town that counted. So it wasn’t that. I’d seen it with the other families. He didn’t ask to hold your sister, just you and he held you like something precious before he cooed ‘my little king.’” Howard stopped and rubbed his eyes for a moment, and Richard is uncomfortable to see the wetness on his father’s hands but he doesn’t mention it. 

Instead those three words make him feel nauseated and if there was anything more than water in his stomach, Richard is sure that he would have spewed the contents of it all over the floor. He doesn’t want to think who else has said those words to him, but he also can’t help of think of the first time he and Coralee had sex, and how she’d kissed him after and called him that. 

The nauseated feeling doesn’t go away, especially when Howard begins to speak again. “He’d named you of course. Started calling you Richard as soon as we were sure that you would live inside of your mother. I don’t think he expected you to start screaming when he held you though. The nurse swooped in and saved you, announcing that you needed to be fed immediately before shooing us out so your mother could. 

“When we stood on the hospital balcony, looking up at the stars, and smoking those damned cigars and drinking his brandy, Warren looked to the stars and he reminded me about our goddess’s fate. He clapped me excitedly on the shoulder and told me that you were the key and you would open the door to her finally having her due. How you would be a king, and how cherished and loved and protected our whole family would be. 

“I put off looking for the Horn then as long as I could to stay home with the three of you. At first Warren seemed content to let me. But I knew what he was waiting for: he was waiting for me to dutifully report back your abilities when they manifested. And they manifested earlier than they had with the other children, Richard. You were already doing things while you were still in the cradle and I know. _We_ knew, both your mother and I, that we needed to keep them quiet for as long as we could.”

Howard looks to his son for a moment before he takes a deep breath and admits with a heavy voice. “I know you’ve asked yourself thousands of times why your mother didn’t do anything to protect you, to stop the things that I’d done. It destroyed her not to do it, it destroyed her to see you in pain but we thought it to be the best way to prevent Warren from _taking_ you. We’d seen what had happened to the other families by then. We’d heard about the machines, the madness. And we were terrified for you. We thought that we could make him think that you were normal. 

“But we never thought about Cheryl having abilities. We never thought about the things that she could do. I never took the same sort of approach to her as I did with you. But she saw the shadow men. She saw them and never told anyone but you. If she had told us things might have been different. But…” Howard just sighs and takes a bottle of water and sips it as Richard stares at him. 

Richard’s voice is horrified. “Because I recorded her and them. Because I tried to find proof. Because I made a big deal out of it to everyone. That’s how Warren knew.”

“Yes. Thankfully he assumed it was you and never even considered her. Otherwise he would have demanded her for his fucking machine. Your mother was terrified. I’d never seen her so angry or upset. She demanded that we break with everyone connected with Warren. No more parties, no more letting you two play with the other children. No more of Warren’s community. I couldn’t deny her anything. So I agreed with her. I had no idea that in return they would turn on us. I should have but I didn’t. 

“When I took you for that camping trip, it was my last ditch attempt at trying to make reason and logic where your brain went instead of the supernatural. I prayed it would work, even if it wasn’t to the goddess I had prayed to my entire life. I left the next day, do you remember. Warren insisted my search intensify then. He thought by removing me, it would make things easier for the path that he wanted you on. 

“I have no idea what Peggy said to Cheryl to convince her not to ever show her gifts, I just know that it worked. So for the next few years when I was home I tried to enforce the lessons of logic and reason. Yes, I sent you things from those travels but they were trivial at best. Nick knacks and the like so that Warren would assume I was still attempting to indoctrinate you into Tiamat’s cult. But you took my lessons to heart then.

“Still Warren pushed. He thought your mother was too much of an influence on you. On me. He didn’t say it but I know that he was angry that you had managed to find friends outside of the circle that he wished you to have. I rejoiced at the man I could see that you were becoming. But still the plans for sending you to Turkey progressed. I tried to stall them as much as I could, but Warren was growing impatient and his impatience was dangerous. Peggy was worried. And her worry grew to her being terrified. I know you thought she was frightened of me but that was never it. _It was always Warren and what he would do to you_. I had no idea that both of them were getting so drastic. 

“Bobby Maimes was the first child in his cult that had been born in years, and Warren was preoccupied with that for a while. I breathed again. I shouldn’t have. When he went missing, I knew just as you did that it was no simple abduction. I knew Warren was involved and so did your mother. Peggy was inconsolable and she went off the deep end, she was _terrified_ that you and your sister were going to be next. She was certain of it and she’d always had her own gifts. I tried to get home to you all but Warren put obstacle after obstacle in my path. By then you had already found him. By then you were already involved. 

“It was only because you were in police custody that I was allowed to return home. It was clear to Warren then that getting you out of it wasn’t something that your mother was able to do and his power and influence didn’t extend to getting you out of there quickly before you said something that you shouldn’t. We both argued to Warren that you couldn’t just go to an out of the country boarding school with this hanging over your head. So we waited for the conviction.”

Richard just cuts him off, his voice and chest tight. “What actually happened to Bobby Maimes? What did Warren do?” 

“I don’t know for certain. From what I was able to piece together, Warren or his people had taken him for the machine on the way home from school. His bloodline was never as powerful as the others, but Emma and most of the other children had already gone off and left Warren. When they hooked Bobby up to the machine, it was too powerful. It didn’t just take out the demonic energy from him; it took all his energy and that killed him. The man who was later convicted of his murder was one of Warren’s more fanatic devoted and he had actually killed for him before. Someone was punished for what they did, but it wasn’t Warren.”

Richard just lets out a relieved breath that Bobby’s death hasn’t been as bad as he feared for over four decades, but Howard just looks at him sadly for a moment. 

“This part is going to be hardest for you to hear, Richard. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to stop her.” Howard is crying once more and Richard can feel his heart sinking inside of his chest. 

“What do you mean?” But his voice is soft when he says it. 

“Your mother, son. Your mother. When I had to leave again, she was calmer than she had been the entire time I was there, and she kissed me and told me not to worry: she had a plan. If I had any fucking idea what she was about to do, I would have stayed home. I would have done anything to stop her. If you don’t believe anything else about me, believe that I loved your mother and would have tried to prevent her from doing what she did.” 

“Just tell me what she did Howard. Stop pussyfooting around it!” Richard has the unfortunate tendency to turn his fear into anger, and he is doing it now, in order to stop himself from being ill. 

“Your mother became ill immediately following your removal from the police station. I know you always suspected it was stress. Perhaps part of it might have been. But the true cause of her illness was that your mother had been adding rat poison to her morning tea.”

“No. _No_. She _didn’t_. I refuse to believe that.”

“I saw the toxicology report myself, Richard. I found the boxes that she hid when I came home. She wrote me a letter and told me what she was doing when it became apparent that she was at the end of her life.”

Richard closed his eyes for a moment before he just ran to the bathroom and threw up all the water that he had in his system. Then his stomach just heave what isn’t there, as if he was trying to flush the poison out of himself. In his mind's eye he saw her there: her hair falling out, in desperate pain but always having that cup of tea whenever the two of them came down for breakfast. He’d even brought the hot plate upstairs to her bedroom and made sure it was filled with water when she was too weak to make it down. 

Bile splashed into the toilet and Richard just sat down on the floor of the small bathroom seeing that it was stocked with all of the products he preferred. “Fuck!” The word is a scream. “Fuck!” Comes again and he wants to throw things and beat his father to a bloody pulp. He wants to kill Warren with his bare hands in a way that would hurt him. 

But instead Richard just looks to his father standing by the sink filling a cup with water and unleashes the venom in his voice onto him instead. “Where were you?! I begged you to come home. I begged you to help her. Cheryl begged. We knew she was dying and we couldn’t make her go to the doctor but you could have saved her!”

“Warren prevented me from coming home. I never even knew she was ill. Her letters never said, Richard. I swear to you on that. You and Cheryl had long since grown out of writing to me and I never received your letters until after I was home. Warren kept me from saving the woman I loved more than anything in the world, Richard. Your mother died so that you would have a chance. So that you didn’t need to go to the boarding school. So Warren couldn’t get his hooks into you. And I hate myself for it every minute of every day.”

“Good.” Richard’s voice is flat and cold. “Because I hate you even more for it. And I hope there’s a hell so you end up there.”

“Oh my boy,” Howard just sighs. “If Warren succeeds I won’t need to die for that. Hell will come to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The theory on Strand's mother's poisoning herself today is something that I came to in doing research for the story, and you can read the meta on it here: https://tmileseason3fanfic.tumblr.com/post/617290121001254912/a-sad-black-tapes-theory it's sad and terrible and makes me want to hug Richard a whole lot.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos give me life.


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